Things have improved a little bit, not to anywhere that we are out of the woods, but there has been improvement.
Dr. McDonald called the night before last and told us that Gizmo was hanging in there, and that the diuretic had reduced the fluid in his heart and in his abdomen and that he was having ups and downs. But the news wasn’t any more dire than it had been earlier. So I suppose that was good.
Last night she emailed me at 11pm to let me know that “Today Gizmo has had his ups and downs. He was good this morning but in the early evening his breathing, when not on additional oxygen, was more rapid, he settled down with additional oxygen. He has been off any oxygen now for 2 hours and is handling that well. I repeated the ultrasound very quickly today and the free fluid present in the body cavity is largely gone, there is still some distension of the liver veins. Last night he was on supplemental oxygen throughout the night. I am going to ask our night person to go with 1 hour on oxygen and 2 hours off, alternating. He seems to like warm applesauce.”
I replied and thanked her for her continued dedication to him, and asked about the differential blood cell counts. She replied that “The cbc results were surprisingly normal. Please feel free to come for a visit him.”
<sigh>
I’ve done enough differential counts myself over the years I was in the lab at UBC to know that high white cell counts are often indicative of an infection…..an infection can usually be treated. Nothing out of the ordinary means no infection….no infection means the issues are all physiological. Physiology isn’t easily fixable, particulalry when you’re really old, only manageable, for a while.
So today I called and asked when would be a good time to visit. I wasn’t expecting 1pm….but sure…I will do that. So I bugged out of the office for a bit and went to visit the little nut bar.
When they brought him outing his little glass fronted incubator with its plush towel for him to bumble around on, I saw his head swivel and bob behind the glass as he tried to see past the technician….he’d clearly seen me, and he was happy about that.
They put his little ICU on the table and left me with him and, over the next 30 minutes, he stuffed his little head in my hand, pushed for head scratches, gave some cute little whistles and burps, and tried to make a jailbreak up my arm, and was definitely opposed to being put back in the incubator instead of heading for my shoulder. He made his happy little beak movements, and nibbled a little bit at some seeds.
Dr. McDonald came in to speak with me and said “He’s a strange little bird”. She said he’d been making these odd beak movements earlier and she’d thought “oh no” but then realized that they weren’t timed with his respiration. I said ‘Oh yes, he does that, it’s his weird greeting to Kirk’.
She reiterated what everyone has said repeatedly, that he is a ‘sweet little bird’ and ‘very sociable’.
We had a frank conversation about suffering, expectations, euthanasia, welfare, ….. I was clear that his welfare is first, my emotions are secondary.
She asked how I felt about the fact that he should probably be considered a small cage, low perch, ground dwelling bird, that would need medication, and that, moving forward, his big cage is too dangerous for him now. The way that we need to reconsider our environment as we get older and more fragile…is the way we need to consider our animals too. She said that there are those who feel that their animals should always remain young and that if they reach a point where they can no longer act in the characteristic manner that they remember, constitutes suffering.
She said a better measure is to ask yourself if the animal is happy, and an owner in tune with their charge should be aware of that happiness.
I don’t disagree.
We don’t give up on people because they age and cannot perform physical tasks the way they always have.
She said she will continue to monitor him, and that in two or three days, we will revisit coming home.
The rest of the staff encouraged me to come back again tomorrow, and that they will be happy to facilitate daily visits. That was also happy news. I’ve been cautious about not overstimulating him. But he was definitely happy to see me and have his head scratched for a half hour.
So, that’s where we are today.
